Hackers and security experts may share a similar motto: Know thine enemy. In February 2000, David Dittrich, the 39-year-old security administrator for the University of Washington, and "Mixter," a 22-year-old creator of tools for launching attacks against Web sites, faced off . . .
Hackers and security experts may share a similar motto: Know thine enemy. In February 2000, David Dittrich, the 39-year-old security administrator for the University of Washington, and "Mixter," a 22-year-old creator of tools for launching attacks against Web sites, faced off virtually when Mixter's program--the Tribe Flood Network--was used to inundate Yahoo, CNN and six other major Internet sites with data.

The denial-of-service attacks slowed access to the sites--and in some cases made the sites unreachable--for hours at a time.

In a recent interview at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, the two revealed that though they use their skills differently, Dittrich knows a lot about hacking and Mixter is well-informed about security.